One event that my family looks forward to each year besides Christmas, Easter, birthdays, and anniversaries is Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse a Christian International Relief organization headed up by Franklin Graham.
Operation Christmas Child allows for people around the world to fill up empty shoe boxes with small toys, school supplies, personal hygiene items, and related material for either a boy or a girl. With a personal note included, contributors can bring a measure of blessing to children who live in strife torn lands or who have suffered from an earthquake, famine, or other life threatening disaster.
The National Collection Week for this year’s campaign is November 13 to 20 with collection points set up across the country. Many churches participate, some YMCAs, as well as certain civic or private organizations who will help gather the boxes to ship to distribution centers in their region. From there, boxes are shipped via airplane to locations all around the world. Not all gifts will arrive for Christmas, but that doesn’t matter as the shoe boxes are a blessing to the young recipients no matter when given.
My family will be doing four boxes again this year for two boys and two girls. We make it a family project with our boys actively picking up items with their mother and together we pack and decorate the boxes before taking them to our local distribution center.
You can give to hurting children in Jesus’ name through the ministry of Operation Christmas Child. Please click the following picture to find out more information.
I discussed with a client recently some of my sources for writing inspiration and made mention to him of The Fool, Kiplinger’s, and MSN Money as places where I turn to for online business writing research. Honestly, I can usually find as good a source of information around when I click on the Google News site and cull through the search results.
I still subscribe to a pair of print business publications, namely Money magazine and The Deal. Likely you are familiar with the first publication known for its advice to mostly two career couples encouraging them to excessively worry about their retirements while barely out of college. Sometimes I feel that Money is written strictly for self-absorbed individuals which makes sense to me especially since that speaks to what modern day America is all about anyway.
On the other hand, if you are into mergers and acquisitions then The Deal can be quite informative. I like to look at their adverts for Maybach and Rolls-Royce and pretend that my aging Neon can take on both makes. Not a chance. This latter magazine is for corporate dealmakers and anyone else who likes to follow these trends; by reading The Deal I have found some decent material about pending mergers that I would not find easily anywhere else. I can then email my friends stuck in Corporate America to quickly update their resumes if I find their company mentioned.
Besides their weekly publication, on a quarterly basis The Deal will include what they admit to be an advertising insert: Big Ideas in Technology. Just this past week I pulled open my issue and found this same insert included. I zipped through The Deal in just ten minutes but then I sat down and read the insert’s Spy v. Spy article by Richard Sine discussing corporate confidentiality. This particular article is worthy of a read to get a better idea of what requirements employees can face when signing on with a new company. Specifically, that “no compete” clause you hurriedly signed the first day you began work could have a lot of teeth to it. Then again, the courts could rule otherwise… I found it interesting how Pepsi handled the opportunity to gain Coke secrets from a Coca-Cola insider too — sounds like a certain Coke informant will be spending many years behind bars for her dishonesty.
Other than that, there aren’t many other sources of information that I’ll tap as some I automatically consider “suspect” especially if I believe that their editorial objectivity has been compromised. The New York Times is one such publication that comes to mind here — do you wonder why?
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business writing, editorial, The Deal, TheDeal.com,
Kiplinger’s, Money magazine, The Fool, Fool.com,
The New York Times, Big Ideas in Technology, Spy v. Spy, Richard Sine
General | Matthew C. Keegan, 31 Oct 06 | 
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